Ridge Reunion 2009

So we're home from our 10 days in Delaware. It was fun and exhausting all at the same time. We had a great reunion with all 6 Ridge children and their respective spouses/children (and one maybe-someday-spouse-to-be-but-we-don't-mention-that). Violet did an amazing job. She was flexible with her nap and eating schedule, she loved meeting all the new people and even survived her first introduction to humidity. We got there on Friday night and spent a couple of days hanging out before the reunion officially started. Clark and I stayed with our good friends Laura and Evan, and somehow managed to spend the whole 10 days without taking a single picture of them (sorry)! They were great hosts and introduced Violet to their dog Dizzy. Violet loved watching Dizzy run around and freak out about the baby human introduced into her life!

During our flight there, Clark mentioned that his ears really bothered him on the airplane. Turns out he had the worst ear infection the nurse practitioner had seen in quite a while. She was surprised his eardrum didn't rupture during the flight. Luckily, we got him some antibiotics and he started to feel better shortly.

We went to the Adventure Aquarium in Camden, NJ on Tuesday. It was a lot of fun, although hot (this is a theme throughout the week). On Wednesday, we went to the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia, then several Ridges ran a 5K in Wilmington that evening. Clark won the 20-29 male age group, and his niece Amanda won the 13-and-under female age group! Thursday was supposed to be beach day, but it was rainy ALLL day. Instead, one group of people went to tour this battleship in New Jersey and the rest of us took a day off and stayed home with the babies. Friday we went to Longwood Gardens, a former Dupont estate that is now a botanical garden. It's also the place Clark proposed to me! It was great to go back and visit, although it was disgustingly hot and humid. That night we were all ready for the pool party and barbecue we had planned. Saturday we hung out then went to the University of Delaware campus to take pictures (see previous post). Sunday was church and more visiting, and then we were up super early Monday morning to come home!

We had such a wonderful time during the trip and I wish I could post about everything we did. I'll just share my one favorite anecdote. We took Clark's nieces Rachel (11) and Lauren (9) to Longwood Gardens and arrived before everyone else, so we had the girls watch the video tour of the Gardens while we were waiting. Shortly after we started walking, we came to the first treehouse built on the grounds. Rachel exclaimed, "I saw this one on the video! It's a Jewish treehouse!" We couldn't figure out what she was talking about until we saw that the treehouse was named the Canopy Cathedral. Turns out cathedral and synagogue sound like the same thing when you're 11.

Sorry for the ridiculous number of pictures. These aren't even all of them.